Why Upperclassmen Envy Freshmen

College is centered around 4 Fs — Freedom, Fraternity, Fake IDs, and Forgetting How Badly You Embarrassed Yourself In Front Of Carla. Ne’er have four words more adequately summed up an entire four-year period of a young man’s life, except for maybe “constantly erect yet pussyless” for those awkward, pimple-faced adolescent years. As summer approaches its final weeks and all of us soon-to-be young professionals eagerly await leaving our internships and returning to school for one final drunken hoorah, there is but one blasphemous thought encroaching on many of our minds: “I wish I was a freshman again.”

This thought, if made public, could get you laughed out of your friend group. But it’s like secretly wanting to bang your hot second cousin — we all kind of can’t help but fantasize about it. I think. Right?

Rising through the ranks of college, cultivating wisdom about the world, and turning 21, while undoubtedly making you a more civilized (read: boring) person, robs you of the last bit of youthful naïveté that you once had. Drinking will always be drinking, but wasn’t pounding shots of Vlad in your dorm room with the RA close by more exhilarating than ordering an $8 Stella Artois at the hard-carding 21-and-upper? Freshman year is the pinnacle of immaturity meeting opportunity, the Conjoined Triangles of Success as Silicon Valley‘s Jack Barker might say. 18-year-olds are horny morons, and some genius decided to let them live together by the thousands — and you used to be a part of that sloppy, beautiful mess.

In remembering (what we can) of those early days of the Promised Land known as college, many of us nostalgically long to be a freshman again. Some even see it fit to take more drastic measures as a means of preserving freshmaninity, like failing O Chem twice and switching their majors to Communications (your dream of being a doctor wasn’t really that important, was it?). While all three sides in this conundrum might peg their route as the correct one, in the end all groups and their deviated septa end up washed up and on their way out. That’s life. And while it’s hard to face the reality that you’re going to have to take the red pill of professionalism one day, it’s probably better to do it now than to find yourself on a liver transplant list at the age of 26 (lucky for me, I know a guy).

So while these future pledges walk into your rush party with matching orientation T-shirts and doe-eyes like Bambi before his mom got shot, you may find yourself almost envious of the three months’ worth of elephant walks and psychological warfare they’re about to endure. It might even make you consider going a little easy on them. Don’t do it, though; they’re still freshman, after all..